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" person anywhere in Europe would have had a solid grounding in the classics. Certainly the coiner of addict did. Is it an exaggeration to say that Latin and Greek were known quantities in households with more books than a lone family bible? Probably, but if a member of such a household completed any kind of undergraduate or postgraduate work, there would have been significant accumulated exposure to the classical languages, and the cultures they represented, and their stories, their myths and their legends. Obviously old Gabriel Fallopius knew all that stuff. Certainly Friedrich Sertürner knew all about the Greek god of dreams. (And was probably ready to argue for forty-five minutes why it was indeed dreams, not sleep.) In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, anyone educated in Germany as a pharmacist would have known that kind of thing. Which meant Felix Hoffmann did, too. So why did he call it heroin? Even before I learned it was so, I always vaguely assumed ‘hero’ was ancient Greek. It just sounded right. I further vaguely assumed even in modern times the word might signify something complicated, central and still marginally relevant in today’s Greek heritage. Naively I assumed I was proved right, the first time I came to New York, in 1974. I ate in Greek diners with grand and legacy-heavy names like Parthenon and Acropolis, and from Greek corner delis, some of which had no name at all, but every single establishment had ‘hero sandwiches’ on the menu. This was partly simple respect for tradition, I thought, like the blue-and-white take-away coffee cups, and also perhaps a cultural imperative, a ritual genuflection, but probably most of all marketing, as if to say, eat this mighty meal and you too could be a legend celebrated for millennia. Like Wheaties, the breakfast of champions. But no. ‘Hero’ was a simple phonetic spelling in English of the Greek word ‘gyro’. It was how New Yorkers said it. A hero sandwich was a gyro sandwich, filled with street-meat thinly carved from a large wad that rotated slowly against a source of heat. Like the kebab shops we got in Britain a few years later. Central to modern culture, perhaps, but not to ancient heritage. Even "

― Lee Child , The Hero: The Enduring Myth That Makes Us Human

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Lee Child quote : person anywhere in Europe would have had a solid grounding in the classics. Certainly the coiner of addict did. Is it an exaggeration to say that Latin and Greek were known quantities in households with more books than a lone family bible? Probably, but if a member of such a household completed any kind of undergraduate or postgraduate work, there would have been significant accumulated exposure to the classical languages, and the cultures they represented, and their stories, their myths and their legends. Obviously old Gabriel Fallopius knew all that stuff. Certainly Friedrich Sertürner knew all about the Greek god of dreams. (And was probably ready to argue for forty-five minutes why it was indeed dreams, not sleep.) In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, anyone educated in Germany as a pharmacist would have known that kind of thing. Which meant Felix Hoffmann did, too. So why did he call it heroin? Even before I learned it was so, I always vaguely assumed ‘hero’ was ancient Greek. It just sounded right. I further vaguely assumed even in modern times the word might signify something complicated, central and still marginally relevant in today’s Greek heritage. Naively I assumed I was proved right, the first time I came to New York, in 1974. I ate in Greek diners with grand and legacy-heavy names like Parthenon and Acropolis, and from Greek corner delis, some of which had no name at all, but every single establishment had ‘hero sandwiches’ on the menu. This was partly simple respect for tradition, I thought, like the blue-and-white take-away coffee cups, and also perhaps a cultural imperative, a ritual genuflection, but probably most of all marketing, as if to say, eat this mighty meal and you too could be a legend celebrated for millennia. Like Wheaties, the breakfast of champions. But no. ‘Hero’ was a simple phonetic spelling in English of the Greek word ‘gyro’. It was how New Yorkers said it. A hero sandwich was a gyro sandwich, filled with street-meat thinly carved from a large wad that rotated slowly against a source of heat. Like the kebab shops we got in Britain a few years later. Central to modern culture, perhaps, but not to ancient heritage. Even
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